a meteor crashes to central russia injuring over nine hundred people we called first hand accounts in our special report coming up in just a few seconds from now. currency clashes in the euro zone's plight occupy the hearts and minds of financial decision makers meeting here in moscow. and president obama's candidate for defense secretary is republican senators who say they don't know enough about the man heading for the pentagon our top story. live from the new center here in moscow this is r.t. with the on line on the screen twenty four hours a day picture this it's eight fifty one in the morning in a mid-sized city east of the urals when the sky is lit up by the fiery path of

a meteorite about to smash in to its final resting place here on earth in this case it happens to be the middle of russia now we've got as you can see spectacular firsthand footage from those who witnessed this dramatic arrival and we've got plenty more for you a little later here on our team now you go to our correspondent has managed to get out to the region today he joins us now live from the affected city tennis clearly a terrifying experience for the people there what exactly happened today what did they see. just imagine it was about the scene the time when most of the people who work with children were in school. and all the suddenly see this extremely bright flash right over the city one man told me it was so bright it hurts even looking at it. really quickly. without any noise whatsoever

leaving this vivid trace of smoke then it disappeared and a few minutes after that a series of blasts which were so powerful it literally the whole city was rocked by it even though the media landed around one hundred kilometers away from chile admins can now many were able to videotape what was going on and well here's one video which was made right at the time of one of the explosions. out the sounds of shattered glass flying around all these all arms going off so this is definitely a disturbing event for the entire city absolutely very disturbing indeed obviously an extremely rare occurrence but do people actually feel lucky to

a witness there so do they feel lucky that they what killed that they survived this . well at first they were really just shocked because this is the events that were going on that was this is something which grown we seem. immovable it was a reality in its parts so many rumors in the beginning as people were trying to figure out what was going on there were rumors that it could have been an airplane or a jet fighter which went down even a satellite then ended up to be a meteorite and actually the r.t. documentary crew was filming also here in the area and they saw and they were there at the time off for the blast when the meteor hit the ground let's listen to what they had to say about it. we saw a huge tail in the sky like from an airplane and then there was bright fire and an explosion the feeling was like there are three shattering we thought

a military jets may have crashed or that it was some manmade disaster it was a relief to find out it was a natural phenomenon when. i was told that it plane crashed right into our building then we were told that a wall has been partly dislodged and metal structures inside were banned by the blast wave it was very scary all talk about being in the right place at the right time that's extraordinary footage there from a r.t. documentary crew a lot of people were hurt though in what way you know what was it from the impact two or was it from fragments of the meter right itself how were so many people injured. well unfortunately over nine hundred people were injured because of this meteor including over two hundred children and what most of the injuries are connected with the pieces of floor glass just flying around everywhere caused by these explosions fortunately there were no fatalities and i guess.

the the biggest the biggest point here is that the meter landed so far away from the city and it didn't hit any industrial facilities and there are so many around off the city in this area that the consequences could have been much worse when you arrived at the city today did you see a lot of damage that did it look like it was an area that had experienced at a pretty momentous event. well at the moment it looks quite normal fires i understand most of the people already have repaired. the windows in the flats or even the schools because this is we are in the year also it is quite cold here this is an additional additional problem but no. serious damage is seen but the authorities did announce a state of emergency in the area affected by the media or but nevertheless in the first few hours after it hits there were severe problems with phone connection and

it still caused panic since people were calling each other trying to figure out what's happening there were so many rumors like i said from a fall in satellites all the way to the start of the end of the world. do you go to school thank you very much indeed for the live update now from central russia well also following the developments. in our new center in moscow lindsay from its lindsay the impression of course is that once people knew what it was there was a sense of relief despite of course being a terrifying experience yet it seems very odd especially to us but if you look at the area and its history you begin to understand why people are actually expressing relief at the fact that this was a rock falling from the sky and not a nuclear disaster there are seven nuclear fuel plants in that area in fact during soviet times it was sort of a nuclear playground for scientists where a lot of things were tested and nuclear experiments were done and there were

actually two manmade nuclear disasters there one in the fifty's and one in the sixty's so when you're driving to work or picking up your day care and you see a huge bright flash and you hear an impact like this imagine what you think if you live there not exactly the place you think. you're should be targeting but of course interesting enough this region has experienced this sort of thing before yes it seems to be a magnet it's such a mystery to the layman like us who have no idea why something like a meteor would be so very attracted to eastern russia to siberia and even to southern russia one of the the most famous meteorites ever to hit in one thousand eight the famous tom goes. meteor that they hit out in the very far east it cleared two thousand square kilometers of forest land it's shockingly huge and less than twenty years later another another meteor one nine hundred forty seven another and then another ten years ago in siberia at these were huge events. one of the chances

of actually being killed by a meteorite they're very very slim in fact it's extremely rare to hear of anything but there has been one case of a woman being injured by a meteorite falling through her house the. happened in the u.s. state of alabama in the one nine hundred fifty s. she was napping i thought right there the roof hit her on the arm. extraordinary but there again when you think that this just fell about one hundred kilometers away from a populated area absolutely it's really terrifying in fact what these people in the face of this are actually feeling really that it's not much worse because what can you imagine what happened if their fears for realized they do thanks very much indeed. based here in moscow well now let's discuss this further with braun weeden he's the technical advisor for the secure world foundation and has years of professional experience in the national and international space security arena he joins us live from washington. the

full of this meter right caused a lot of destruction and injured hundreds no one does wonder what damage could have caused if it landed in the big or even in the capital city i'm sitting here less than a thousand miles away from where i learned it what could have been the impact if it landed for example here in moscow. well for an object that's that size of it is estimated i think it eight to ten tons and moving on the order of somewhere near twenty kilometers or thirty kilometers per second that's a lot of energy and so when that thing strikes the ground you're talking about a force not unlike a significant explosion so all of the kind of damage that you could think of from a huge explosion is the precise of the kind of damage that could have happened could have hit struck in the middle of a city or any kind of populated area so in that with thinking about voting the fall of the famous we tried in siberia some we were discussing a little while ago that happened whatever

a century ago back in one thousand nine hundred eight the impact on the environment was felt low can we expect any similar effects from this particular impact we've just seen no not likely that this one you know despite the reports and just how many people were injured was actually quite small and as far as we can tell it fragmented in the atmosphere which caused part of the closure and so as you know fairly small pieces that in the ground what causes damage what hit him. was actually bigger and that was resulted in a much more significant damage how come sun system talking about this huge asteroid that's very shortly they're predicting that brown but they failed to predict this one can you not predict meteorites. well you can if they're big enough to be able to track this one was likely small enough that you know there are telescopes and networks operated by nasa in the us and was cosmos and russia and the european

space agency others that are out there trying to detect and track asteroids but honestly there's a lot of them there's hundreds of thousands and their biggest focus is on the really large ones ones that are hundreds of meters in diameter of kilometers in diameter that could potentially you know due to the os what happened to the dinosaurs so if someone happens then what happens and if you do detect one what you did last it with a rocket or something out how can they perhaps tilt this in the future are they trying to develop ways of intercepting them they absolutely are there's actually a group of experts that's meeting in vienna austria right now. media the united nations that has been meeting for several years looking at both how to detect how to warm up to respond and possibly out of the well there are some tech dollars in a thought oh but you know nothing's been tested yet and it would definitely choir significant effort internationally. ok just briefly do you think that the danger

posed is really under or perhaps overestimated just briefly i mean it's been a great story for us today and happily nobody's died but clearly a massive impact on the people there concern i think it's over in that it's not so little to worry about but there is that risk of one big one that could cause widespread damage. brian thanks very much indeed for joining us brian weeden technical adviser for secure world foundation live from washington we appreciate your time you're welcome while there just to remind you or not to dot com we have live updates on the meteor strike including how some enterprising locals are already cashing in some are trying to sell parts of the crashed media online the most expensive being offered for ten thousand dollars but of course even if someone is willing to dip into their pocket for this there's no way to verify whether your buying a piece of meat or perhaps just a rusty old stone but of course jokes aside scientists say that meter was the largest recorded object to strike the earth in about a century we've got

a few facts for you here it's estimated that the wait was about forty tons when it approached our planet before breaking up into smaller pieces now experts also say that when it exploded the meter released a huge amount of energy making the blast interesting enough even more powerful than the nuclear weapon tested by north korea just a few days ago and specialists are currently examining a crater with the width of six meters where a piece of the meteor it supposedly crashed a lot of interesting statistics now coming out of this and can you imagine the weight of that was forty tons more information for you still to come here on r.t. . a potential currency war the european debt crisis is dominating a meeting of finance chiefs from some of the world's biggest economies here in

moscow for russia the gathering is seen as a launch pad for the g twenty summit later this year all these you see coming off has been following discussions in the kremlin. fact a lot of conflicting statements have been said about this talk of the impending looming currency war which has led some folks some market watchers to be quite confused as to what we'll actually see coming out of this g. twenty talks here in moscow now at the center of the whole controversy and crisis is japan due to its aggressive monetary and fiscal policies it has seen a weakening of the and so what this has resulted in this essentially a clash between the countries very little consensus we did hear from a russian finance minister. who has said that this is certainly an important issue that of currencies that is very much on the table but at the very same time we've seen other world leaders come up and say that you know what currency wars aren't really a threat they're trying to calm down the market to some have even questioned whether

japan's actions constitute as a manipulation of the currency basically when a country is in a dire fiscal situation such as of course as we all know many countries are today like japan for instance is one option that a country has is to devalue its currency so making something like this a twenty dollar bill worth less you can do that by a variety of means for example printing cash because why would you want to do that when your currency is worth less your manufactured goods are cheaper on the market and that gives you a temporary boost in the economy which could be pretty critical in tough times like this now what we've actually seen the fear here is that when a country does that your trading partner strike back they say ok we're going to lower the value of our currency and that sets off a currency war such as the one that we saw in the one nine hundred thirty s. which has led to the great depression now japan insists that it is simply trying to stimulate as kwame it's not doing anything to prompt a full scale currency war of course no country here wants to see that but the

reason that we're seeing so much disagreement and so little consensus among the countries is that you know what for example the united states its policy isn't all . difference the fed in the u.s. has been printing money like crazy so these developed countries don't really see any incentive in isolating japan in trying to really squeeze down this currency manipulation issue because they don't want to mess around with their economies essentially so that is really the crux of the issue. of existence because also closely watching the meeting of the g twenty finance heads in moscow forties business correspondent natasha shouldn't scott has more on what's catching their attention the other issue that's being actively discussed by the finance ministers here in the last go is the so-called financial transaction tax in europe that the european commission claims will bring in additional thirty five billion euro chu the european coffers earlier today i actually spoke to the head of the o.e.c.d.

on fugu rio who said that this measure would only work if all of the world's leading economies would agree to it and he explained why you could watch that entire interview later on on our c. and of course all the details of the g twenty finance ministers meeting the coming to you in the business bulletin at eighteen thirty g.m.t. . with still to come in the program the. second anniversary of the uprising that toppled preparations includes setting up roadblocks across the country and nato forces gathering in the capital as a number of those protesting against the new government increases. budget cuts in britain hit police numbers with thousands of layoffs in the past year takes a look at what a few offices means more crime more on that after the short right. to

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continues here in the u.s. senate republicans have stalled in the tent by the white house to make chuck hagel the secretary of defense he felt to vote short his sentences decided to win some time to find out more about him what he got to and explains. those who blocked the vote on chuck hagel nomination this thursday know very well that he will eventually be confirmed as defense secretary there are enough votes in the senate to confirm him but the stalling of the vote together with the humiliating treatment that the senators gave chuck hagel two weeks ago at his confirmation hearing this whole process is seen as

a message all by itself those lawmakers showed that they could crush anyone who would allow themselves to dissent from washington's core foreign policy beliefs chuck hagel remarks at the confirmation hearing disappointed even his supporters during the hearing which to me seemed like an imposition on mr haygood had to backtrack on many of the statements he had made before including that war with iran should not be an option including his criticism of israel's actions and some other foreign policy views that he had expressed as a senator so throughout that long going to exhausting hearing mr hague kept apologizing for much of the previous statements he had to take from previous positions he had taken and he bent backwards to show how quote unquote mainstream his views are and the senators kept accusing him of not being again quote unquote mainstream enough to get the job chuck hagel swore to defend basically all of washington's foreign policy orthodoxies his confirmation process has been humiliating in many ways than it demonstrated the state of u.s. foreign policy of policy basically intolerant of an ill try to do vision

alternative having said all that the president's decision to nominate chuck hagel of course knowing the position chuck hagel had taken before it was also seen as a message president obama had said previously that there is too much of your talk going on and maybe by nominating chuck hagel he wanted to play down because too many people here in washington are too eager to talk war just during the confirmation hearing the word war was mentioned one hundred twenty times the word iran one hundred eight times by comparison of ghana's than the war that the u.s. is fighting right now just twenty six mentions of course those are just words but they may very well show how eager many many in washington are to discuss new wars without even having finished the old ones. the british government's programme of cuts has resulted in a drastic drop in the number of police officers to the lowest level in over a decade and radical reform package has already sparked many security questions or he had a chance to ask m.p.'s on both sides of the argument if the fears are reasonable.

in the number of police offices up to the lowest levels for eleven years is the impact of a twenty percent cut and whitehall funding to police budgets takes effect which is think more about these. joined by conservative m.p. . and labor m.p. thank you very much to both of you for joining us jim i'm going to start with the a lot of the police officers that we were speaking with we've got is a bit of these reforms but at the same time they see the number of police. and police. so i mean it's quite confusing time i think for police officers as to what's being expected. i understand that there may be slight consolation but given the battering the reputation of the place is had over recent months the government had to take steps to shore up the reputation. of. the police service. in my part of east london we've seen over one hundred fifty

uniform stuff in the past two years productions in crime which we've seen year on year for six years reverse and for the past two years have been an increase in crime last year of nine percent so as some parts of the country the cuts are being imposed are affecting the safety of people on the streets what do you say to. the lowest level of police now for eleven years. so they not know the the police are having to take their share of the of the spending reductions along with the rest of the public sector to get the deficit under control and what we're actually seeing is it's not about police numbers it's what you do with the police or innovative ways of maintaining a police presence on the streets and jim a home for to have a an increase in crime in his constituency but the fact of the across the country on average last year crime fell by eight percent and in fact it fell in my force in leicestershire by eight percent as well so we are seeing a overall reduction in crime across the country at the same time we're cutting police numbers. sharing back office services because of forces to save money and

keep those police out on the streets where people want to be sort of in offices filling in paperwork and with red tape not just the police integrity it's the public perception of the police integrity and the reforms will help to improve the public perception of prison. right thank you very very much for joining us you can join in our debate online dot com we've also been on twitter a lot of the public have been getting involved in this debate as well as members of the police. reform to join in the debate about the latest police. and westminster has been active in other areas to bring in free mental health treatment for peace for the five thousand pounds for the program online we've got the details of why the politicians in parliament are being offered the treatment of free of charge. top secret documents surfaces revealing his plans for military involvement in mali and lift the lid on the plans of the world's most feared terror network.

libya is brace for fresh unrest the second anniversary of the revolution that toppled gadhafi is being held under the threat of violence security is tight and foreigners are leaving us the first protest against the current government are expected in benghazi the birthplace of the revolution former agent and imagine explains why libya has seen any post arab spring optimism destroyed. people have invested a lot of hope in the arab spring i think now they're beginning to realize the harsh reality that a lot of it was backed by the west and the west wants us to strip their countries of the mineral wealth i mean we're seeing the spillover into other areas like mali and niger as well and this is all part of a bigger sort of power player between us wanting to secure the minerals losses of africa generally and stop china getting them so in terms of democracy in arab springs they're very naive to think that that's what the west is trying to help these countries to achieve we've seen an absolute mess left behind by the nato

invasion of libya which is what happened two years ago let's not mince words and that was problematic on so many levels not just the international legal level where suddenly aggressive war could be justified as humanitarian intervention even though it destabilized an entire country and results in many more deaths than could be prevented. but we're also looking at a situation now where the country has lost its stability where there are reports coming out from independent journalists about militias still holding great swathes of the country and their power where we have competing fairly fundamentalist politicians police groups as well fighting over their territory without any of the promised ability wealth and democratic values that were suggested when the nato went in so it's become such a mess and so many levels. some other international news for you now in our world update the south african athletic superstar oscar pistorius has been formally

charged with the murder of his girlfriend the man known as the blade runner will be held in custody until court hearings begin on tuesday model reeva steenkamp was shot dead at the paralympians house on thursday in the suburbs of her tour. thousands of anti-government protesters have packed a major highway in the capital of minima it's a day after sixteen year old protest and a police officer died through demonstrations marking the second anniversary of the country's awful two years ago protests in the country began to demand more freedoms and rights for the shiite majority in a nation run by. activists in syria said one hundred fifty rebels and government soldiers have been killed in the last two days of heavy fighting in the northern city of aleppo the attacks began on wednesday is rebels hit the city's civilian airport and nearby military control of the international airport will provide a strategic advantage against president this.